Posted May 21

Summer at its best is all about a change in pace: A reprieve from the over-scheduled weeks of the school year. There is time for kids to go to a pool or the beach, explore the woods, have fun at camp, enjoy stretches of play time with friends, and simply hang out! Wow, to think that they might even have the chance to say “I’m bored!” sounds like music to my ears. It is a wonderful time for kids to read and to continue growing as readers. Likewise, it is an opportune time for children to keep exploring numbers and thinking about math in the world around them.

While reinforcing math skills during the summer, parents must be careful not to do more harm than good by overemphasizing rote drill work. It simply isn’t true that to be good at math means to be fast at computation. Some of the world’s greatest thinkers, scientists and mathematicians have not been fast at arithmetic; however, they became famous for their higher-level thinking skills. Certainly it is important that children learn to add, subtract, multiply and divide efficiently and quickly and that they learn their basic facts without having to figure them out or count them on their fingers, but computational facility is only part of a comprehensive math foundation. Children need time to develop an understanding of mathematical concepts and opportunities to think and reason, to solve problems in a variety of contexts. Instead of sending kids off to do hours of drill work on their own, children can practice their math facts in a variety of interesting contexts and families can play fun games that develop mathematical thinking.

Here are some general goals to keep in mind for your children over the summer:

Posted September 5

Posted October 13

Ever since the New York Times mentioned the Sidwell Friends School (SFS) in an article about Singapore Math, we have been receiving emails and telephone calls with questions. Are you using Singapore Math? (yes) Has the Lower School adopted a new program? (No)Did Lower School rewrite its math curriculum? (No) If SFS Lower School students took those international math exams, would they be ranked at the top? (We are getting there!)

Posted October 18

One of our goals in the LowerSchool math program is to expose students to a variety of ways to perform operations and to a variety of strategies for solving problems. Learn more about how we teach these strategies.

Posted November 1

We all use the commutative, associative and distributive properties when working with whole numbers and so do our children. You might think a column discussing these properties is “too mathematical” for parents of young students but in fact understanding the relationship between these properties and basic numeric operations is the foundation of arithmetic.

Posted November 15

Many parents are surprised to see their children using alternative subtraction strategies when it comes to multi-digit problems, but these strategies are just as efficient as the standard algorithm they are wedded to. These strategies make mental computation easier and they work well on paper.

Posted November 8

Students invent wonderful computational methods when the teachers embed tasks in simple contexts. From the very start, teachers are presenting story problems which in turn naturally foster the development of a variety of strategies.

Posted December 17

Here are some suggestions for great books that discuss a math concept. These books are great read together books so you can talk about the concepts while you read! We'll run lists with additional books from time to time.